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Noel Gallagher: “Young bands are cocksuckers”

Noel Gallagher recently talked about the success of Chasing Yesterday and the music industry.

Focusing on the success of Chasing Yesterday in particular and comparing it to the band’s eponymous 2011 debut, Gallagher comments on the momentum Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds generated and continued to grow with the release of last year’s album, adamant he didn’t expect the project to take off as quickly or in the form it has, especially following the break up of Oasis.

“What can I say?” he says. “I never expected it. When I left Oasis and I had that two years away, I didn’t do anything. I was sitting around and I wasn’t really thinking about doing anything; I’d left one of the biggest bands of all time and I was glad to be out of it, I was enjoying the rest. Once I decided that I was going to make a record, when I finished that record, I knew that record was great. I knew that first record, that sitting beside any of the Oasis albums I’d ever made, could stand the test of time.”
“On the day that it was released, it was just a case of taking it from there, you know? This record [Chasing Yesterday] followed that one and the one I’m making now follows that. I don’t think of myself as a solo artist or an ex-member of Oasis – I’ve just grown into this now and it’s only going to get better from here on in. I think I’m making up for lost time; I wasted a lot of fucking time pissing about over the last ten years! I’m making up for lost time and I’m enjoying it and the people are enjoying it, that’s the main thing.”

Releasing music in a climate that possibly relies more on imagery than it has done in previous years, Gallagher has managed to remain outside the circle of the spotlight chasing, the sometimes humorous and oftentimes aggravating, lamenting the need to emerging bands to be constantly selling themselves perhaps more than their music. “Young bands reflect my opinion of young people in general,” Gallagher deadpans. “They’re cocksuckers. Apart from the young people who come to my gigs, who are amazing, everybody outside of that is a bellend. Particularly the boys. They are particularly…bellend-ish. Yes, that’s the word I was looking for.”